Showing posts sorted by relevance for query facebook. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query facebook. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, February 04, 2011

Facebook Deals Launches in (UK)





We all know that Facebook is a master at ‘targeting’, be it by relationship, birthday or keyword and has built connection targeting tools like Fans, Applications, Groups and Events. It’s fair to say that Facebook is now set to dominate targeting by location.

I was encouraged to hear on Monday 31 January 2011 of the announcement that 'Facebook Deals' had launched in the UK, and thought to blog my opinion, as this year I will be very much focused on our 'Local Geo Targeted Search Campaigns'. I will seek to explain to you what this launch could mean for your business and why you should consider aligning Facebook Deals into your integrated marketing plans. Firstly I’ll provide a little introduction on what Facebook Deals is.

What is Facebook Deals?
Facebook deals is an App that lets local businesses interact with Facebook users using Facebook Places, to check in to their physical shop or venue. The Facebook user is rewarded with incentivised promotions, discounts, loyalty schemes and offers when they visit the retailer. As you can probably imagine, the benefits for repeat purchases, customer engagement and brand loyalty are vast.

In summary, if you (as a user) have a Facebook Profile and have allowed access to the Facebook Places Application, then you can start to find out more about Facebook Deals in your area/close to your location.

You will just need to look out for a little yellow or green icon when you check into venues using Facebook Places, then click on the deal and claim it. Simple!
The Facebook blog says:
You'll see a few different types of Deals: individual deals for a discount, free merchandise or other reward; friend deals where you and your friends claim an offer together; loyalty deals for being a frequent visitor to a place; and charity deals where businesses pledge to donate to a cause when you check in.

If you are a business, then you may be interested to know that 50% of merchants who used Facebook Deals (in the US from Nov 2010 to start of year) have decided to renew their offers, and with millions of people using the service, we can only imagine that this has generated a positive ROI.



I will share some key points below.

Facebook deals for local businesses
Facebook Deals has been developed as a marketing tool to not only lure customers but to repay them by for spreading the word about your business when they check in. As such, Facebook Deals needs to be treated like any aspect of an integrated marketing strategy. The actual time to physically create the deal has been nicely simplified by the clever developers at Facebook.

Other Geo Location Targeted Apps
There are already other competitors in this geolocation market, most notably FourSquare which makes a shopping experience in to a reward-based mobile game. It’s all about rewarding the customer and building a stronger brand loyalty. Naturally, not all Facebook users will take up these offers but as our experience of the internet is increasingly defined by what our friends are logging, sharing and posting, then Facebook will be able to translate that experience into the real world.


Progressive move from places to deals

Last year, we wrote about Facebook introducing Facebook Places a Facebook mobile application, which allows ‘out and about Facebook users’, with their smartphone, to let their network of friends know, in real time, about the locations they are visiting, and check their friends into those locations too. For businesses and brands that have a physical location it makes sense to target Facebook users that have a Facebook Place and offer them a deal if they come into the shop and participate in a promotion.

Once geolocation service; Facebook Places, was established, it was a logical progression to then start offering deals. These deals will become increasingly more personalised and competitive, especially when small, local businesses recognise the benefits of being found more easily, locally online and encouraging their customers to share information about themselves, in exchange for deals.

This is the real strength behind Facebook Deals; where a brand is able to really get to the core of what their customers are looking for in terms of service, interaction with the brand via social networks, relevant offers and preferred technologies. At the same time, customers that check in to the retailer have already allowed the brand full access to a wealth of personal information, directly from their Facebook profile i.e. gender, age, aspects of their social graph and shared information, which under other circumstances shoppers can be reluctant to divulge.

Facebook Deals allows retailers to get friendlier with their customers and allows the customers to share not just the pleasure of the purchased product but the whole shopping experience and with more than just the person sitting next to them. Geolocation targeting is here to stay!

Once the retailers have got their customer relations teams crunching the data on visits, successful campaigns, analytics and demographics you can be sure that the customers will be ‘rewarded’ with yet more tempting and targeted deals. Customers can expect much more than just a free cup of coffee. How about 20% off a Mazda MX for starters. Whatever the deal, retailers will now be very carefully considering Facebook Deals as part of their Integrated Marketing Plans and Mobile Strategy.

Some retailers ‘in’ on the launch include Argos, Benetton and Debenhams. Both Argos and Benetton are offering charity donations in return for checkins by customers”

There is some great advice here on how deals work for business:




Find out more about Facebook Places
For additional options: a few articles that we have bookmarked on 'Facebook Deals launching in the UK' are listed below, we particularly like the comments made by Andrew Grill from London Calling, where he talks about 'Foursquare Fatique' and what it means for the just launched Facebook Deals service in the UK.

You can also read more about Facebook Deals on the Wall Blog What does Facebook Deals mean for brands?

Facebook deals Goes Live in Europe blog from Mashable;

Facebook Deals – adding the ‘what’ to the where and who on InternetRetailing.


The Flashlight Team would be very happy to talk to you further about how you can integrate Facebook into your marketing plans, we look forward to hearing from you.


Author: Fiona Anderson

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Updated Facebook Promotion Guidelines


Promotions have become a core component of brand presence on Facebook. By offering a prize or experience, brands can encourage users to “Like” their pages and share the branded links with friends.

Competitions, contests and giveaways are a great way to increase your fans, increase awareness of your page and retain their interest and keep them engaged. Last week Facebook made some quite significant changes to the Facebook Promotion Guidelines (Updated: May 11th) affecting those who own and run promotions on Facebook Pages.

Facebook have also removed some specific rules with regards to running promotions to minors (13 – 17yrs). They have also provided more opportunities for previously prohibited categories: i.e. stated that there is no longer prohibition on certain types of promotions such as alcohol, diary, gambling.

View more information here over at Inside Facebook: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/17/age-residency-industry-restrictions-promotions/

We believe the reason why they are being quite significant with their changes, is their personal quest (and it makes sense) to remove themselves as middle-men between marketers and the varying laws throughout the world. We share our thoughts on the changes surrounding Facebook Promotions below: looking at what we now can’t do, can do and how to roll with the changes.

Promotions on Facebook

The main point to shout about is that Facebook no longer want you to use their mechanics i.e. like a page, like a post, send a snap as a way of entering a contest.

However section 4 in the guidelines is quite interesting, as it points out that “A like” must not be a condition of entry. Which means you could encourage “a like” to go and find out about the competition. Example: you could run the competition on your own website and give instructions on how to enter on your Facebook page. Hide the competition details on Facebook to “Fans only”. This will encourage people to like your page and will not be in breach of the guidelines.

View the Promotion Guidelines here: http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php (Date of last review: May 11, 2011)

The new guidelines make sense

The new Facebook guidelines do make perfect sense. It takes all the competition queries, complaints etc away from them and passes these back to the brand.

Scenario: Imagine if you really wanted to enter “that competition” to “Win Tickets to see Take That backstage”, you had to send in a story to say “Why you should win”. You spent “1 week working on it” and when you went to upload the entry, “Facebook went down”. You would shout at Facebook wouldn’t you rather than Take That!

So Facebook have released these new easy to read guidelines to basically say: My words:

“You can run the competitions and contests but make sure it is clear that they are nothing to do with us, as we can't handle the grief. Thanks”.

The Future for Facebook promotions

You can keep up to date with the latest happenings, guidelines by following: http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages. We also like to follow:
http://www.facebook.com/marketing for marketing solutions and inspirational ideas from other brands.


Facebook has included a very clear definition of what constitutes a promotion: “a contest, competition, sweepstakes or other similar offering,” where “by ‘contest’ or ‘competition’ (Facebook means) a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner determined on the basis of skill (i.e., through judging based on specific criteria)” and “by ‘sweepstakes’ (Facebook means) a promotion that includes a prize of monetary value and a winner selected on the basis of chance.”

By no means is this is not the end of Facebook Promotions, they are simply inviting you to be more creative in your use of external applications and linking into your fans that like to live on Facebook.

Don’t abuse the Facebook mechanics

The new promotion guidelines clearly state that you must not use the Facebook mechanics as part of a contest.

This involves mechanics of any fan, uploading, commenting, or liking a page that will be judged.

Section 4: of the promotions guidelines does however encourage interaction on Facebook and indicates that actual entry has to be through an external application. View the snippet from section 4 below:

Section 4: “You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.”

Facebook Promotion Guidelines, May 2011.


So as you 'must not condition registration', this means you can use Facebook Updates to say
“Come and enter our competition here” and off your site you can tell people to join your Facebook Page for exclusive offers from your company as long as the next step is click here to enter the competition.

A few scenario examples of what you can no longer do on Facebook

1. Father's Day promotion: Upload a photo of your Dad and tell us why he is COOL!! for him to Win XY.
2. Share your snap: Please like the snap you want to win.
3. Comment on our update and tell us “why you love us” and you could win XXX.
4. Like us and in XX months, we will choose a random winner of YYYY.
Use of External Applications

The promotion guidelines state that “all promotions” on Facebook need to be run within an App that you or your digital agency have created (you keep the email addresses) or on a 3rd Party Application (such as Wildfire, Involver).

Please note that most third party apps will charge you and they often receive the email addresses, not you, so there are clear benefits of creating your own App or Canvas Page.

Find out more about Apps on Facebook here or contact us.

Be the owner of the competition

The new guidelines strongly indicate that you need to make sure you don’t make it look that Facebook are affiliated with your company / competition, via text and images and logos at the competition landing page and also be clear in the terms and conditions that Facebook is simply a channel.

Remember also re: the 'can't dos', that you are NOW not allowed to contact the WINNER on Facebook, this includes via messages, chat and wall posts. You will need to receive their email address and contact the winners off Facebook. Once you have notified them via an off Facebook channel, then you can post congratulations on your wall and thank others for entering.

How to roll with it

1. Design an App which integrates with your website competition module and Facebook or design an iFrame page and have an email opt in for the competition, or create the email opt in on your site and direct Facebook users there. We saw a great example of a competition Facebook App over at the Science Museum Facebook Page, see the image below, which shows email opt in and link to the terms and conditions.



2. Make sure you list in your Terms and Conditions that this competitions is nothing to do with Facebook

“I give permission for (name of company) to contact me using the entered details provided if I am the successful recipient of the prize. I acknowledge the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. I understand I am providing information to (name of company) and not to Facebook"

3. Notify the winner via email. Once the winner has received notification they you can broadcast their name on the FB page.

“We recently connected XX to let them know that they are the winner of YY...congratulations”

We have a new mantra in the Flashlight Search Marketing office: "when designing social media contests always consider not just the creators but the spectators and the voters too. Create a tick list on contest mechanics, web development and off site integration" This mantra especially rings true with the new FB promotion guidelines.

If you need assistance in running a competition or setting up an onsite competition module to integrate with Facebook, an iFrame app or opt-in form on your website then please give the Rocktime Sales team a call, so that they can organise this for you.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Facebook Pages - Building the REAL community

Facebook say Facebook Pages allow you to: “Connect with your audience, share your story and participate in real-time conversations quickly and easily on Facebook”. Read more over at Facebook here; http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages

The below provides quick tips from the Rocktime Flashlight team on how to build a community on Facebook using Facebook Pages.

Building the Authentic Community

Facebook for business should be about genuine, valuable interaction with fans the most effective way to build the community is by engaging with your customer base. Critical mass online often takes time, remember it was the "Tortoise (slowly but surely) that won the race, when the Hare took a little nap”. Talk to us more about this analogy if you like, basically it sums up that slow organic growth in social media is not a bad thing.

Your Facebook Page needs to be engaging and interesting to ensure your fans/customers/potential customers, keep you in their news feeds. It doesn’t need to be “wham bam wham” with production of chat on your page wall, you just need to talk to your fans at a time suitable for them (when they are most engaged).
Ads can be used to give your community a boost, perhaps expanding to a new demographic, but the key is content, content, content.

Lessons in Engagement
  • Give your fans a reason to visit
  • Get them to love your page so they can recommend you to others
  • Provide interesting insights of value (to the fan)
  • Share news
  • Competitions
  • Deliver informative information which indicates that you know your industry and don't constantly promote your products or service
  • Give people a reason to talk about the page
  • Introduce people to the reasons as to why they should be visiting or liking the page
  • Be chatty & human to encourage conversation and ensure ongoing interaction
  • When delivering Facebook Ads, keep the target audience in mind, deliver an ad that will resonate with your fan rather than shouting about how great you are
  • Advertise on the Facebook page to encourage further interaction on your site
  • Make a note of all your customer touch points (Newsletters, Lost password, Page 404 not found) and how you can advertise your networks of interaction there to encourage Facebook Page fan growth
  • Finally, keep it real (think topical stories and conversations)

Considerations:

People tend to join a community when they see it has many fans already. You may develop a campaign (on or off Facebook) to encourage fans to join, but you must always return to the quality over quantity argument - will you get return?

You will if you devise a campaign closely linked to your target audience, that will deliver value.
A biggy to consider is that when launching any campaign attention needs to be given to the resource of social media & a strategy established for this to work. Along with delivering Facebook Pages strategy the Rocktime Flashlight team can assist with these Social Media resource issues, talk to us to find out more.

If you would like to share any further tips for Facebook Page Growth, feel free to comment below. I am sure we could share more, re: Facebook Mark Up Language (Facebook HTML) and Social Plugins, Apps, Multi Channel Integration, but we simply wanted to provide a simple list of 'do's', that our readers can use to help them get on the right track to Fan Page growth.

Author: Sarah Griffiths


Monday, March 25, 2013

Acquiring Fans on Facebook


Research from Efficient Frontier (Jan 2012) found that on average, brands are acquiring fans at a rate of 9% per month.

Are your fans/likes growing at this pace?

If you regularly post updates but get little feedback from fans, it may be because you are talking rather than conversing. Because, people don't go out and "like" random pages for businesses that they haven't already used, or plan to use.

Customer Engagement is key

Facebook isn't just about broadcasting your news; it's about customer engagement and via the sharing of interesting content, enhancing your brand awareness to the friends of your Facebook page fans.  The above image is from the Mothercare UK Facebook page, who regularly post 'Facebook Exclusive' offers, giving their customers a reason to 'like' them and stick around.

To increase engagement on your own business Fan page, consider who your customers are and how your customers want to engage on Facebook (i.e. helping shape the brand, contests, visual experience, events and incentives for sharing).  Secondly, consider what they search for on Facebook, where else are they active, take a look at the other related pages where your target market are regularly commenting, what is a hot topic?

Who are your customers?

Along with viewing popular conversations/engagement, questioning what your fans want from your page and considering who your fans are/will be, will help you develop engaging content.

For example, for hotels, guests' needs will differ from those interested in family breaks to business trips; fun breaks to activity bases; somewhere quiet to a lively restaurant; local attractions to events at the hotel.

Use Facebook to seek out and engage with local news stories and regular events where there may be a potential for a tie-in with your page. For example, hotels could offer group rates to an event or conference organiser and invite the organiser to tag the hotel page when mentioning the discount for the event to attendees/delegates.

Goals and expectations

When tasked with the objective to 'enhance your Facebook page acquisition rate', two good places to start are establishing goals for your Facebook page and considering why your target audience would like your page / what are they expecting?

As a means of example, we have listed below ten goals for a Hotel Facebook page and ten reasons why a fan may want to join a Hotel Facebook page.

Ten goals for a Hotel Facebook page

1. Extend marketing campaigns
2. Community engagement (attract fans of your friends) / be a story teller.
3. Generate extra web traffic
4. Boost brand awareness and increase brand loyalty
5. Support customers and receive instant feedback
6. Increase bookings to accommodation
7. Increase bookings to events
8. Increase bookings to conference and meeting rooms
9. Keep up with the competition
10. Obtain further insight into customer base (using Facebook insights)

Ten expectations / reasons why a customer may 'like' a Hotel Facebook page

1. They are passionate about their location (images)
2. They let me know about events happening in the area
3. They like to share with me the special Facebook promotions
4. They inspire me to get creative in the kitchen
5. They are eager to know how the hotel can make our stay even more comfortable
6. Should I post a recommendation on the page, my Facebook friends will see this
7. They keep me up to date on those who supply the hotel
8. They are helpful and generally care that I have had a pleasant stay
9. They share their latest reviews from customers and citation websites (i.e. Trip Advisor)
10. They make me feel part of their story

We hope you can relate these goals and reasons to your own business and that it will enable you to think more strategically about growing your Facebook page popularity.

Should you require assistance for social media strategy and growth, please visit our Social Media Strategy page or contact our Sales team today to discuss your requirements.

Author: Sarah Griffiths





Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Building a Facebook Page


Alice Cheetham shares her tips on creating a Facebook page. If you have any additional feedback you would like to share, please do send in a comment.

I’ll admit, we do talk a lot about Facebook, but boasting over 500 million active users and said users spending over an estimated 700 BILLION minutes per month alone on Facebook, you can’t blame us.

This month, as you might have noticed, we’re talking channels here at Rocktime and what better than one with such popularity as Facebook!

We’ve talked before about Facebook Pages, namely in our article ‘Facebook Pages – Building the REAL community’, well worth a look at in preparation for putting together or optimising your businesses’ page. Returning to the topic of tips for Facebook, now we’re looking into top tips for building your page.

Firstly, don’t let your landing page default to your wall! Instead, make use of the custom tabs to put together something engaging and eye catching and most importantly, completely under your control.

Why don't you want new users come to your wall first? Well bear in mind, depending on your page’s privacy settings, it could be that anyone can post on your wall, not necessarily new-visitor friendly. Coding for custom tabs used to be exclusively written in FBML – Facebook Mark Up Language – somewhat like a special version of HTML exclusive to Facebook, but now they’re phasing it out. As such you can put together a custom page, with iFrames for example, using HTML , CSS, Javascript etc, allowing much greater variety in the complexity of what you can create, the limit is your imagination and the space requirements!

So now you’ve got your custom tab, set to be your default landing page, you’ve successfully navigated any newcomers to something (hopefully) interesting looking at least, now how to keep them there?

  • Applications: Thanks to the Facebook Developer group, there are 1000’s of applications on the Facebook platform, many of which can be directly integrated with your page with little tech know how.
  • Conversation: The days of a one way conversation between business and client are gone, engagement is important! Let people see that you are attentive, willing to answer and ask questions in return; it all helps with promotion of your brand image.
  • Content: Just like any other channel, whether it’s a blog or twitter, it’s important to provide interesting content to your audience to keep them coming back. Sharing content from blogs or Twitter posts, posting and tagging photos and generally interesting topics will encourage repeat visitors.

One other thing to note, the maximum size you can have your page profile image is 540 pixels high by 180 pixels wide, a lot of Facebook real estate! Take the time to put together a graphic for your Facebook Page’s profile image that sits within this ratio. Whilst this is great for having an eye catching presence at the top of every page, for example a flyer or advert style image, one downside is that sadly it won’t fit too easily within the small square thumbnails that Facebook uses for any comments you post, so that might be something worth taking into account when picking an arrangement for your avatar.

If you need help making the decision as to whether Facebook will benefit your brand, or you would like assistance in populating your Facebook page with compelling content, then go ahead and get in contact with Rocktime's Search Marketing team.


Author: Alice Cheetham

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Facebook Spam and Online Security



There are many different channels open to spam; it is always annoying, often disruptive, sometimes expensive to repair and frequently avoidable.

The main area of spam in the past had been from unsolicited bulk email messages sent indiscriminately. In today’s blog post, we are concerned with protecting ourselves on social networks and especially Facebook.

There are some interesting words we hear, whilst trying to stay safe online, against spambots, malware, botnets, worms, scareware, attacks, hackers, Trojan, cybercrime, ID Fraudsters, re-directs etc.

Facebook does get spammed a lot with third party apps. The old adage that prevention is better than cure still holds true in the case of Facebook spam. The offending apps are third party and not created by Facebook.

Dangers

Sometimes hackers will simply phish for your log-in information and hijack your account, spamming your friends in the process. Other times, the app will instead download and install malware on your computer.
Be aware that Hackers and identity thieves do get into Facebook accounts and create fake profiles and pages.

There has been about a 75% rise in link-spam in Facebook over the past 6 months. Facebook isn’t alone in these spam issues; Twitter has suffered a similar fate but has been more responsive to dealing with it. This warning sent out today by ComputerworldUK; “It's the hottest invitation in technology right now, an email telling you how to "learn more about Google+." If you get one though, be careful about clicking on it. It may be spam. Linked In has also come under heavy scrutiny.

Avoid online spam

The main thing to remember is Just don’t click a link if you don’t trust it.
Don’t be drawn into following at a link that invites you to view a message like "See who is viewing your profile OMG I cannot believe it!!!!!!", or “see who’s blocking you!”. DON’T click a suspicious link is the simple rule. The links are fake apps and nearly always posted on your wall by someone you don’t have a regular communication with. Criminals are looking for us to open up our computers to viruses and spyware; thus allowing them to infect our systems and thereby increasing the chance that they may stumble upon your banking details.

There are a few simple guidelines we should all follow to keep our Facebook and computer secure. Always run system cleaning tools, as some of the spam is actually malware and is attacking your computer. Always run antivirus scans, McAfee comes highly recommended. Keep your applications updated; after all, if you’ve installed it you should update it. Actually, the same is also true for removing unused programs.

Just as you don’t install software on your computer that you don’t trust, this is the same rule on the social networks.

Facebook Security

Facebook has a page dedicated to Facebook Security and you can read the Facebook Guide to Controlling how you share.

According to Facebook and pertaining to Spam: Ads cannot contain or promote 'spam' or other advertising, or marketing content, that violates applicable laws, regulations or industry standards. Spamming on Facebook will lead to your account being permanently disabled.

The Web-of-Trust (WOT) add-on tells users which websites you can trust, based on other web users' experiences. WOT is building a community of users sharing information on bogus websites. There is a free download available for all major browsers, to stop access to dodgy websites.

There are lots of helpful sites and blogs that alert users to how Cybercriminals are adopting a new disguises, like suggesting that the "Facebook password had changed" but it was in fact a malware attack. Computer users discovered malicious code had been sent to their email inboxes, pretending to be a notification from Facebook that their social networking account has been used to send out spam. Don’t believe the email address as they can disguise and redirect emails.

There are products that can intercept these attacks like Mal/BredoZp-B from SOPHOS. They also post regular Facebook security news and how to Follow Best practices. Only trust what is from someone you know, or something you’re subscribed with. This applies to games as well.

The market for the safe URL shorteners has become a huge opportunity for security companies, that also offer URL shortener providers like Saf.li and Mcaf.ee Their URL shorteners offer enhanced security which is a step in the right direction for bringing down spam and supporting transparency of the destination domain.

Among the many specialists who write helpful blogs about how to remain secure online, there are of course many groups on Facebook offering helpful advice. Some more useful than others!



Make sure you are in control of your page.
Tips:

  1. Avoid Infected Apps & Links On Facebook. DO NOT INSTALL APPLICATIONS WHICH YOUR ARE NOT SURE ABOUT.

  2. Check your privacy settings related to applications; from the "Account" drop-down menu located at the top of any page on Facebook, Click the "Edit your settings" link under the Applications and Websites section towards the botton of the page, Click on the application you'd like to view. If you don't see the application listed, you can find it by clicking the Edit Settings button towards the top right-hand side of the page.

  3. As a Page admin, you can target updates to specific people in your audience and choose to send an update, such as a status or link, to everyone who likes your Page, or to target your update to people in a specific location, or in different language. When you click to update a status, question, photo, link, or video, you will see an option called "Everyone, Friends of friends, Friends only, Customise”. i.e. Click on the small drop-down and select "Customize." Only people who like your Page in the target group selected will receive the update from the Page.

  4. Proactively moderate content posted on my Page by adding comma-separated keywords to the "Moderation Blacklist" in the "Manage Permissions" section, available after selecting "Edit Page".

  5. When people include blacklisted keywords in a post and or a comment on your Page, the content will be automatically marked as spam. Wall posts will be moved to the Pages Spam filter, which is hidden from public view. Comments will appear in grey to admins, but will not appear to the public.


  6. Use the automatic content filtering on Page walls that will ensure that posts soliciting spam are removed from public view, as well as ensure that posts containing good content remain more visible. Go to the conversation. Open the Actions menu. Select "Report Spam."

  7. You can easily remove people connected to your Page if you don’t want to read their posts: Click "See all" under the Likes section, Select the "X" next to a user's name, Click "Remove."

  8. If your friends are sending you messages through applications you haven’t added, you will need to either contact your friends to resolve the issue or block the application from its Profile Page.

  9. To stop an application from sending you messages, you will need to remove the application from the application's Profile Page.

  10. You can report an offending app issue directly to the developer by going to the application’s Profile Page and clicking "Contact Developer" at the bottom of the page, or by clicking "Contact" at the bottom of any canvas page within the application.

  11. Report the application for abuse by going to the application’s About page and clicking "Report Application" at the bottom of the page, or by clicking "Report" at the bottom of any canvas page within the application.

  12. Be aware that Facebook messages are indexed by Google, which is great for brands but worth mentioning that these messages can be searched for on Google even when they are marked viewable by friends only.

  13. Read about Blocking Applications in the Help Centre.

  14. Make your profile only viewable by friends. That works well for personal profiles but less easy for Brands trying to be inclusive.

  15. Use an email account that isn't attached to your online banking account, your PayPal account, your eBay account, etc.

  16. This one is quite funny! Don't use your pet's name as your password if you're going to post your pet's picture and name on your profile!

  17. For your password, be sure to use capital letters as well as lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Also, break up words you use.

  18. Sometimes a simple virus can be sorted by just changing your login and password.


Future

Facebook is constantly making security improvements listening to their 500 million active user feedback and there are discussions for future improvements, like Privacy by default, vetted app developers, HTTPS for everything. Until some of these security measures are put in place it is going to make it harder for businesses using social media monitoring tools, as spam skews the metrics.

On a positive note; University of California PhD students and security experts from StopTheHacker.com launched a free BETA app service this week called MyPageKeeper. The App aims to keep spam and hackers off your Facebook Wall and keeps Facebook safe from malware and spam.



We will be interested to find out how it detects a piece of content as spam, but it's most likely that MyPageKeeper is simply database driven. Regardless, if it gives us added security protection by allowing a free safe app, which only takes 2 minutes to download, then it is worth it.


Author: Fiona Anderson

Thursday, August 25, 2011

IFrames and Facebook

This month the blog is related to topics that the Rocktime Technical Team discuss. In this blog Craig talks iFrames and Facebook. Think of it as a 'Window within a browser'.

Facebook, as of February 2011, officially allowed the use of iFrames; allowing users to build fully customised facebook pages for their custom page tabs.

An iFrame is a section within a web page that can display another web page. This will allow for externally hosted web applications such as shops, forums, booking forms and more to be included on a Facebook Page.

iFrames allow for more flexibility in pages compared to the FBML (Facebook mark up language) which is now being depreciated; old pages using the FBML will still function however all new pages will have to be created using an iFrame.

FBML was developed to enable users to build Facebook apps that integrated into a user's Facebook. Currently, Facebook app uses iFrames to integrate website content into your Facebook page. It can do whatever a normal webpage can do.

The key advantages of using iFrames include:
  • Traffic driven directly through Facebook
  • The use of Analytics software
  • The use of CSS and your own code, allowing for full brand integration and increased functionality
  • embed video
To find out more about iFrames and how you can integrate your webpages into Facebook, please talk to our Sales team. Also you may like to note that the majority of our Content Management System modules have the ability to be fed into Facebook via a Facebook Application. The Facebook Application will render as an iFrame, which will stream content directly from your website.

The Flashlight team will be promoting our integration of our Competition Module with Facebook, so if you have this module, then they may be in touch soon to enquire about an update.


Author: Craig Sherlock

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Top Ten Tips for Facebook Pages

Top Ten Tips for setting up a Facebook Company Page
Facebook has 1.19 billion monthly active users

We are regularly asked for tips for optimising a Facebook Company page. Here are just a few to get you started...but mostly it is all about engagement strategies.

Top Ten Tips for setting up a Facebook Company Page

1. Know who you want to connect with, what and why you are looking to connect on Facebook.  Define your goals. Develop a strategy to listen and search. 


2. Choose a suitable cover image. First impressions count. Feature Call to Actions just below the cover image. Image dimensions 851px wide x 315px tall.


3. Highlight posts and publish more than once a day. Remember visual content rules on Facebook. Photo posts get 39% more interaction. Reply to comments.


4. Give focus to building your page and to optimise for Facebook Graph Search, make sure your basics are complete (Category, web address, about section, local place page, address). Tag and geo-locate content.


5. It’s not about the number of likes. The metric that matters is the number of people engaging with your Facebook page. Manage page permissions - can people like, comment, share. The average number of minutes users spend on Facebook mobile is 914 minutes.


6. Share your milestones (key dates) and post effective engaging updates, like question, quotes, competitions. Engagement rates are high on Thursday and Friday and highest on the weekend. Posts at 1pm get the most shares and posts at 3pm gets the most clicks. 


7. Use the tools within Facebook, Apps, Highlighting posts, Schedule Posts in the activity log, Personalisation for Custom audiences, Search, watch other pages, get ratings and recommendations.


8. Don’t forget about the opportunities offered by Facebook Adverts and Promoted Posts.


9. People discover more content from the people they know and pages they like. Consider which posts get shared. Add quality articles over memes. Track, measure and tweak.


10. Cross Promote other social channels from your Facebook Company Page within campaigns.

Facebook has 1.19 billion monthly active users and it is always changing; as you will notice from this Facebook engagement blog we wrote back in 2010

Feel free to share your Facebook for Business tips in the comments section below.


Author: Fiona Anderson

Monday, August 19, 2013

Aysegul talks about Facebook Graph Search


Facebook Graph Search has been recently rolled out to everyone using Facebook in US English.

The tool lets users find specific information including their friends’ favourite hotels, restaurants, films and more, using filters such as location, gender, specific personal interests etc...

In some ways, Graph Search is a natural extension to the News Feed. However, rather than reviewing friend’s news feeds, now you can ask questions to Facebook about your friends and quickly find out the results. For example; searching 'Friends that have gone to Barcelona on holiday' would bring up a list of all the friends in your network who have either listed Barcelona as somewhere they have visited on their timeline or have checked in to a location in that city. You can then message your friend to learn more about it.

With its features, Facebook Graph Search is believed to be really big for marketing from creating awareness to purchase decision making process, as most of the people searching for pubs or restaurants etc... that their friends ‘Like’ when they’re figuring out where to go and in general friends’ recommendations are important decision making triggers.

Via this tool, people will be exposed to a huge range of new results.

Let’s try a research for hotels:


You can narrow it down by making it more descriptive:


What does Facebook Graph Search mean for brands and businesses? 

From a business perspective, whether you’re a small or a large business, you would really want to get your data into Facebook so that you’re showing up on the results pages.

Not all the businesses probably have physical locations on Facebook, so that they will need to think of clever ways to get themselves found in Facebook.

In terms of marketing, this change also support the need for an Integrated Social Search approach as this development is additional proof that the search and the social teams can’t be separated anymore. Brands and companies would want the SEO efforts to be taking into account what is happening in the search as well as in social media and in this case Facebook.

Below we have listed a couple of points about how your Facebook pages can best take advantage of the opportunities presented by Facebook Graph Search.

1)      Make sure your Facebook listings include the right information and are optimised.

This can be ensured by checking if the right category has been chosen and the added business address is correct. To fully optimise your page, suggest completing your profile including important keywords, posting and correctly tagging photos and videos, and encouraging your fans to add recommendations to your profile as the reviews will show up in Graph Search results.

2)      Encourage Check-ins

For local optimisation, encourage your fans to check in to your business page whenever they visit. It is one of the most important features as people mainly tend to search by location.

3)      Learn more about your fans to provide more value

This tool lets you learn about your fans’ interests and likes by sorting them into behavioural (hobbies, recent activities) and demographic segments (age, gender, location).

Fans interests can be used for Custom targeted campaigns, contests; and by identifying the other pages your fans like you can learn what content to share will be liked by your fans.

This may help you to provide more value to your fans and to increase brand loyalty.

For more tips and the possible search combinations you could use to help you conduct your research, suggest viewing the article 17 Ways Marketers Can Leverage Facebook Graph Search from Social Media Examiner.

If you have any queries on how social media can benefit your business, please do get in touch with our Sales team.

Author: Aysegul Yigitbasi




Thursday, August 19, 2010

News Flash: Facebook announce Facebook Places



Facebook have just launched their geolocation service, Facebook Places in the US. Read about it on the Facebook Blog here: Partnering with sites which offer similar service: Gowalla, Yelp, FourAquare, Booyah.

The Flashlight team thought it was quite amusing that: ZDNet described the news as 'the worst kept secret since, Apple's iPhone 4'.

The app will allow Facebook users to provide real time update of their location to their network of friends within Facebook, whilst they are on the move. Initially the service will only be available as an iPhone app and through the website touch.facebook.com - which works well on Android and other smartphones.

One of our favourite things and in the same breath not so favourite things, about Facebook Places is that you can also tag your friends if they are in the same location in a photo or via status updates.

In relation to above point (not so favourite) we all know that Facebook have been critised in the past for privacy features. Well this time round Facebook are making it very clear about the opt in and out features, available on the app. You can even turn off the 'let my friends' check me in feature too.

Facebook are hoping that developers (like us) will soon take note of this and begin to build 3rd party applications to take advantage of the location data available. Time will tell, as we haven't had news when it will reach the UK yet.

For more information, then Mashable have written a fantastic comprehensive guide to Facebook places here, go check it out.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Excited about Social Commerce




This month on the blog we will be discussing what we love about Social Commerce. We aim to talk about word of mouth marketing, social commerce websites we like, integrating your shop with Facebook and social commerce functionality we recommend.

Retail / E-Tail has entered a new phrase where product discovery and purchase decisions are informed by the collective and distributed via social intelligence of peoples’ own networks of interactions/social graphs. There are a number of websites that encourage social discovery of products found online; two of our favourites for social discovery of products are Polyvore and Kaboodle.

Social commerce is not new; Amazon's customer reviews and Ebay's groups could be classed as early examples of social commerce. The term has come back in the lime light, with announcement of Facebook Credits and news that some of our favourite brands have set up a Facebook shop. Of late there have also been some clear winners in social commerce, with Groupon (a social deal site) reported as being the fastest growing company ever. Furthermore, within our industry there are many stories about brands making their website more social, for example integrating Facebook plugins to their websites.

There was a recent survey of Facebook users (by 8th Bridge) which found that one third of Facebook users prefer never to leave Facebook for functionality, including shopping, suggesting that Facebook is morphing into a social commerce platform giving further insight that is people not brands that are driving social commerce. However, in contradiction to that point, it must be noted that, social commerce on Facebook is yet to make its mark in the UK. The IAB recently reported (5th July 2011) that a survey found that 89% of UK social networkers have yet to buy anything from Facebook and with 44% not interested in doing so.

From the same study, the IAB found that “tapping into the power of online recommendations and the influence of friends is essential to make UK shopping more social. Some 53% of consumers were more likely to look up information about a brand if a friend had recommended it, and almost one fifth (17%) stated they were likely http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifto buy from a brand if it was recommended by someone they knew” Read more about the IAB study on UK social shopping behaviours here on the IABUK website.

It is important for any brand to consider how they are creating a social experience for their customers, both online and offline. We think Simple engage well with their skincare customers

Common questions include: How will their customers recommend them to others? Are our customers likely to rave about our latest products? Would they be interested in sending a coupon to friends? Which social media channel i.e.: Facebook, Twitter, should we use? How will this relate to our overall business objectives? Which social share icons will be useful for our customers and for overall website growth?

Rocktime are regularly making changes to their client websites to enable them to create a more social shopping experience. Where appropriate they are advising their clients to add appropriate social share icons, where possible think niche, to mine and nurture their brand ambassadors and to monitor customer behaviour to maximise return on investment from social activities, i.e.: identifying that competitions are best run at lunch time.

Word of mouth has always influenced purchase decisions; we are encouraging clients to bring reviews onto their site for social and SEO benefits and to enable site visitors the option to spread news of their reviews / interaction further. This is based on the fact that 90% of purchasing decisions are subject to social influence (Wired magazine, 2011).

According to research from Booz and Company (May 2011) it is expected that the social commerce market will soar to $30 billion by 2015.

A few of our other social commerce facts, which we have collated whilst monitoring trends over the past 3 years, include:

  • 150 million people engage with Facebook in external websites each month (Facebook, 2011)
  • Social Media in the UK: A visitor coming from a social media site is ten times more likely to make a purchase online than an average visitor- 7% vs. 71%. (Simply Zesty, 2010)
  • 53% of people on Twitter recommend companies/products in their Tweets and 48% state their intention to buy the product (ROI Research for Performance, June 2010)
  • Two or more channels are used by 78% of consumers to browse, research and make purchases. (ATG, March 2010)
  • In the near future we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media. (Opinion from Socialnomics, August 2009)
  • 90% of online consumers trust recommendations from people they know and 70% trust opinions of unknown users (Econsultancy, July 09)
  • 60% of retailers use customer reviews, 55% say reviews are a priority in the company year (Shop.org, July 09)
  • 25% of search results for the world's 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. (Socialnomics, August 2009)

It was also interesting to find out recently that the most active social sharers are women aged 27 to 33; this demographic also drives the highest conversions on social media sites (Research from Spinback, reported in Mashable 12/05/2011).

Rocktime has set up an internal Steering Group on Social Commerce to make strategic decisions on the growth of social commerce within the Rocktime E-commerce shop. Best practice will always be promoted.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Social Commerce functionality will include, but by no means limited to, RSS Feeds, User Generated Content, Social Share Functionality, Social Network Integration, Social Layering, Communities and Niche Groups/Messages.

If you have questions on how you can effectively implement a Social Commerce strategy and are unsure about the best route to take, please call in and talk to a member of our Sales team. With our active ‘Social Commerce’ internal steering group, you can be positive that we will be on the ball with the most up to date trends and social functionality.

If you have any further social commerce statistics that you would like to share with us, feel free to leave a comment below.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Image credit goes to Sarah, who snapped the Facebook Credit Cards in her local Tescos and for the second image credit goes to the Janrain Blog who write about the four emerging social commerce tools for retailers.

Friday, March 02, 2012

Facebook Timeline for brands

Facebook Logo
As the final roll-out of Facebook Timelines for personal profiles rolls ever nearer, this week sees the introduction of Timeline for brands as well. The option to switch to Timeline is already available for Facebook Pages, and it’s looking like the 30th of March will be the date for compulsory uptake of Timeline for pages. Some well-known brands have already got in there with some great displays of what a business can do with Timeline, but what do these changes really mean?

Facebook Timelines
There's a lot of new changes to take in, perhaps the most immediate change off the bat is the removal of the landing page. In our previous thoughts on organising a Facebook Page, we were all for using iframes to create your own custom, free from Facebook formatting, landing page. In place of a landing page we now have the Timeline page, with its large header banner and Timeline arrangement down the side. Extra tabs that were once the mainstay of Facebook brand pages are now for the most part removed, and instead we have a section for photos, apps and company info.

The large cover photo is a new addition right at the top of your page, which offers a large space to personalise and open the look and feel of your page. Taking into account it’s prominent positioning, updating this regularly offers a great opportunity to make your visitors aware of new opportunities.

The profile image has also changed, from the sizeable rectangle we were allowed before, now we’re reduced to a much smaller square profile image, on the plus side, it will at least thumbnail neatly when making posts on your own wall!

Bear in mind what an app comprises of is largely up the administrator, whether it’s what was once a custom page in an iframe, or a list of free issue apps for things like events and other social network integrations, it’s likely that all previous custom tabs will be converted into ‘apps’ that the visitor can click into.

Furthermore these now load on a separate page. You can also rearrange the order of this section to highlight particular content to users.

Facebook Timelines
When it comes to the actual wall, as you can see on the side, we can now add in significant events from the past and date them appropriately. As a whole the wall becomes a more dynamic and visual experience. Images and videos are larger and take a more prominent position in the wall content over text, and can either cover half or the entire width of the wall.

Timeline also adds the ability to send private messages, meaning that fans and visitors can converse with you privately, adding another dimension to potential customer services.

Facebook Timelines
The backend has also been thoroughly updated and streamlined, as well as the ability to receive and send private messages. Through the admin panel overview you can check out notifications, new ‘likes’ as well as basic analytics for your page. As an administrator you now have more control over the content posted onto your wall by fans, allowing the option for all content to be reviewed before going public on your Timeline.


What are the benefits to brands?

The new cover image is a whopping 850 odd pixels wide, which presents you with a lot of graphical real estate right smack bang at the top of your Facebook page, excellent for grabbing a potential visitor and drawing them in. Its prominent position makes it great for product promotion and pushing, since it’s the first thing your visitor will see.

By pushing the info section right to the top of the page, rather than leaving it lingering in the sidelines, it now becomes a lot easier for users to get the gist of your brand immediately. Furthermore offering the ability to send private messages to and from pages opens up new channels of communication and prevents walls from becoming cluttered with conversation between admin and client, which whilst handy for engagement, may be entirely irrelevant to every other visitor to the page.

The Timeline format itself lends itself to giving out information and content much more so then the previous wall designs. Of course, the conversation between brand and client is as important as ever, and in a sense Timeline lends itself to encouraging such discussion. The constant stream of information is easily accessible on the first page, and limited only by as much information as you, the brand, put in. Offering up more information for the user to consume leads to further engagement, and prolongs the interactions you have with your visitor. Timeline appears to be less a case by case display of content and more of a streamed story, dependant of course on the information you put in in the first place.

As Mashable puts it in their explanation of why Timeline is great for brands post;


“With the focus shifting from building conversation to sharing content, the purpose of a Facebook brand page will be less about selling and more about telling an authentic story. Brands can express what makes them unique and build an emotional connection with fans through behind-the-scenes photos, blooper videos, real-time mobile pictures, sound clips and exclusive news. In addition to expressing the brand in the present, a brand can utilize the Timeline to speak to its past to reignite nostalgia and sentiment that may be associated with it.”


If you're interested in making the most of your online presence, or wanting to find out how you can include Facebook and social media into your online strategy, then why not get in contact with our Sales Team here at Rocktime.


Author: Alice Cheetham


Thursday, July 29, 2010

Choosing a Username for your Facebook Page

If 25 people or more are connected to your page, you can select a username for your Facebook page or Facebook profile by going to: http://www.facebook.com/username/. The Page username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (“.”).

Facebook state:

“The selected username should clearly identify the artist or business represented by your Page. Create a username that is as close as possible to your public figure or business name (e.g. AshtonKutcher, PizzaHut) to avoid any confusion or misrepresentation. In addition, generic words (e.g. restaurant) are not available as options for Facebook usernames. Think carefully about the username you choose for your Page as once it has been selected, you will not be able to change or transfer it. Be sure to check out Help Center for answers to common questions about usernames for Facebook Pages. If you wish to report an infringing username, please visit our username infringement Help Center”

Full instructions for setting a Facebook Page Username

This should take you 5 to 10 minutes.

• Login to Facebook
• Go to Account
• Go to Manage Pages, Go to page, Go to edit page, There will be a hyperlink on News for page admin - click Usernames
• Click link 'Select a Username' or click: http://www.facebook.com/username/
• Then click the hyperlink - 'Set a username for your pages'
• Check availability and choose your desired URL name for your Facebook Page.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Social Media Review: Shopping Centres


Shopping centre marketers are starting to use social networking as a cost effective method of keeping their retail destinations in front of their key audiences.

Social media for shops (on and offline) has proven to be a great tool to drive awareness, footfall and most importantly sales. We are seeing a number of shopping centres now promoting the ‘Community’ feel on their sites, but many are missing a trick in integrating their community focus with social media.

Rocktime works with a number of fashion and beauty bloggers, who we know regularly tweet and blog about new store openings at their local shopping centres and are eager to promote the latest shopping trends to their followers. As a consequence, there is a significant opportunity for shopping centre marketing managers to leverage and connect with the local fashion bloggers, letting them know in advance of new launches, shops, or possibly even blogger-specific events. Many shopping centres use Facebook to connect with their regular shoppers and this morning we found almost 100 UK shopping centres of differing sizes that currently use Twitter.

The majority use Twitter to interact and engage with fans and shopping centre staff as well as promoting:

• Shop offers
• New launches
• New shop openings
• Meal deals
• Competitions-West12shopping centre in Shepherds Bush is particularly active
• Following the stores in their centres & Re Tweeting their promotions & news


Ashford Outlet Centre in Kent regularly posts lifestyle tips, new shops, charity events and personal shopping services on their blog. Their BIO states:

“Insider news on the latest stock, best buys and events from the people who work at, shop at and love Ashford Designer Outlet”

Bridgend Outlet centre has a similar message:
“Insider news on the latest stock, best buys and events from the people who work at, shop at and love Bridgend Designer Outlet”

On closer review this particular chain of Outlet centres in the UK shares the same web template, with each also offering a blog in the same standard design. Each page within the website is unique as they are focused on the individual shopping centre locations and facilities; content is however repeated across the blogs, which isn’t a good strategy for SEO, as the shopping outlet with the most links to it will be the one that will receive a placement in the search results for that blog post. Nonetheless this is an effective way of getting the word out on what is new to a location-targeted audience.

View the links below to understand more about the standard template designs:

Ashford Designer Outlet

Bridgend Designer Outlet

We recommend that shopping centres use social media as part of their overall marketing plan, but for true ROI it should not be viewed as an ‘add on’ but must be integrated with traditional media marketing such as print and radio, as well as focused on the website search optimisation strategy.

If you give shoppers a reason to integrate with your communities, then shopping centres can then drive these campaigns via other marketing channels - i.e. posters within the centre, local newspapers, or social responsible community PR programmes to increase community involvement further.

Examples of encouraging shopper to interact might include the following:

“Find out about all the latest shopping centre gossip over at Twitter and Facebook”

“Let us know what you think of the new XY store over at our blog”.

“Who would you like to turn on the Xmas lights? Vote over at our Facebook page”

“Keep up with the latest style trends with us”
(view: http://www.westfieldstylenotes.com/springsummer-preview-river-island/)

Social Networking can also assist with the creation of other cost effective ideas, which can be derived by listening, learning and engaging with your fans within social networks or on your corporate blog.

Shopping Centre Marketing Managers, or a designated marketing agency, can use social media to trail out new ways of getting people increase footfall to a destination, such as:

“Take part in an exclusive competition; pick up a leaflet from the info office this weekend”

“Print off this voucher available on Facebook and get it stamped over at the Info desk and receive discounts at xy store”

The information captured can then be fed back into the shopping centre’s marketing database, and used to further help promote community involvement and most importantly drive further footfall.

Sharing with you my (current) top ten shopping centres using Social Media
Bicester Village (Club, YouTube, Twitter, ENews, Facebook, Flickr, RSS)
West 12 Shopping (Twitter,VIP ENews)
West Quay (Twitter,Facebook)
GunWharf Quays (Club, Facebook, Twitter)
Liverpool One (Twitter, ENews)
West Orchards (Twitter, Facebook, ENews)
Spinningfields (Community, Club, Twitter)
Westfield (Twitter, Style Blog)
Bullring (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, RSS, Community, ENews)
Trafford Centre (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, YouTube)

As a team we really are getting quite passionate about the value of social media for retail clients, if you are in retail and would like to discuss this further please get in touch with Fiona Anderson in the Flashlight Team.

Fiona worked on early in-store theatre innovations for fashion brands, through to current expanding a brand’s online footprint. Fiona’s direct experience with the challenges of operating a shopping centre has been the Dolphin Shopping Centre, in Poole and small scale events at The Cascades Shopping Centre, in Portsmouth, back in 2004. Surprisingly she has been quoted as saying “she hates shopping for herself but loves the shopping research for clients”. Give her a call and convince her that your shop, shopping centre or retail experience will change her mind.

Our Logic Content Management System boasts several modules to suit retail clients including: Voucher Codes, Competition module, Community features, Store Locator, find out more about Rocktimes Bespoke Web CMS here.

In the meantime happy shopping....


Author: Sarah Griffiths @sarahgriffiths

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Facebook updates Insights; real time analytics

Rocktime talks Facebook Insights and Updates
The wind of change is certainly blowing strong in the Facebook camp. Along with their new Timeline format, of which the compulsory switch over for is fast approaching, Facebook Insights (their built in analytics engine) has also had an update.

Earlier this year Facebook updated their own analytics engine, Insights, to now allow statistics to be viewed in real-time, removing the two day delay previously in place. This is a great update for any brand that runs campaigns through their Facebook pages, especially those on a short time scale, as it allows brands to see how fast information is spreading immediately.

This change to real time statistics will also help brands and businesses to see what’s working and what’s not, and allow them to adjust their content or approach appropriately.

Facebook Insights
The update to Insights also includes a new measurement “People talking about this”, it’s a little ambiguous, and in fact covers quite a range of factors. Ultimately it allows you to view the numbers of Facebook users who have:
  • Liked your page
  • Liked, commented on or shared a post on your page
  • Answered a question you’ve asked
  • Responded to any events you’ve announced
  • Mentioned your page
  • Tagged your page in a photo
  • Checked in, or recommended your place
This certainly is great news for marketing and social media strategy, but developers will also need to be aware that certain metrics that once were read by Insights are being removed, check out their Developer page on Insights for more information.

If you’re interested in learning how Rocktime can help you with Social Media and adjusting to changes in the internet environment, then why not get in contact with our Sales Team and arrange a meeting.


Author: Alice Cheetham